


Lackadaisy Saturday Morning

by handful_ofdust



Category: Lackadaisy
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-24
Updated: 2014-09-24
Packaged: 2018-02-18 15:21:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2353133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handful_ofdust/pseuds/handful_ofdust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The morning after the night before. Alcohol is a harsh mistress.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lackadaisy Saturday Morning

**Author's Note:**

> For sovay.

When Mordecai Heller wakes he finds he is, in descending order of annoyance, stark naked, sticky, in terrible pain from the skull on inwards, and face-down on the broad, hot, hairy expanse of what (from the smell) must inevitably be—he realizes, with horrible swiftness and accuracy—Viktor Vasko's chest. His spectacles are missing, his unpommaded hair stands straight up, and somebody (Viktor again, he can only assume) has knotted his own silk necktie around his wrists, which are up above his head, as though maybe he was being held down—on his back, splayed out, with someone else between his knees and his mouth too otherwise engaged for any objections to be audible—by both wrists when it happened; not uncomfortably so and not tied hard enough to hurt, but tight enough to make tearing his way free highly inconvenient.

  
The place seems wrecked, from what little he can see of it; Viktor's place, not his, which is just as well, since he thinks alcohol must have been involved. It would certainly explain his still-compromised senses, along with his sudden utter inability to make logical decisions.

  
“Why am I restrained, exactly?” He demands, not necessarily expecting an answer. Thinking: _Did I draw my gun on you, or try to? Did you give me_ reason _to?_

  
“You keep telling me not to rumple you, last night,” Viktor tells him, straight into the top of Mordecai's buzzing head, his voice low-pitched and slow-massive as a passing Black Mariah. “So eventually, when I get sick of it, I tie. Is only vay to make you stop.”

  
Mordecai swallows, then wishes he hadn't. Says, testily: “Hmmm, interesting. Because it rather feels like once that was achieved, you went right on ahead and did what I told you not to anyways.”

  
And: Though he can't quite crane his neck in the right direction to confirm it, he thinks he can almost hear the smile that follows, or what occasionally passes for one. As Viktor replies, unconscionably smug: “Yah. I rumple you pretty good, I guess.”

  
_Is that what they're calling it, these days?_

  
“Oh, please,” Mordecai mutters—and _This is vhat you keep saying!_ , he almost expects Viktor to chime in with, immediately. But the thing about Viktor—one thing, at any rate—is that sometimes, more often than not, surprisingly often to be exact, he knows when he's gone too far.

  
 _How much did I drink?_ He wants to ask, but it doesn't matter; in his case, “any” would be more than enough, as they're both well aware. So: “Where are my spectacles?” He asks, instead.

  
“Inside your shoe, I tink. For safe-keeping.”

  
“Yes, perfect. And...where are my shoes?”

  
“...vith my shoes?” Viktor shrugs. “Is small place; ve find.”

  
“Being untied would probably help with that, if you could at some point see your way clear to managing it.”

  
“Oh, this—this is not my idea. You keep saying you are going to leave, so...I do, and then you don't. Is your own fault.”

  
“Wait a minute; I thought the tying up was because of the 'rumpling'.” No answer. “Very well, I suppose it's moot, or perhaps that the one led to the other. One can only hope you don't pull this same trick with the ladies, at least not routinely.”

  
“ _Ladies_ , they don't vant to leave.”

  
Never? Ever? And _vhen I rumple a man, he stay rumpled,_ no doubt. Except...no, he's fairly certain he's the only man Viktor's accorded this particular invitation to, at least over the time Mordecai's been in St. Louis, or possibly the time he and Viktor have been—acquainted. Partnered. Forced to work together, by Atlas May's idea of a bad joke. Any of the above would do.

  
“One way or the other,” he suggests, “you should probably also think about turning me over, before I suffocate.”

  
“Ask nice, I maybe vill.”

  
“Oh, for God's sake: Turn me over, then, Viktor, _please_. You insufferable Slovak ox.”

  
A moment later, Viktor is doing just that, efficient but gentle; Mordecai finds himself cradled, looking up from the big oaf's lap, blinking against a light that seems ridiculously bright but probably isn't, considering that the shades seem (thankfully) to be drawn. Viktor's single eye beams down at him, the same shade of green as his own ( _pair of damn monsters,_ Atlas sometimes says, proudly), examining him for—what? Visible bruises? (Are there any?) Suck-marks? Love-bites?

  
“You look good like this,” Viktor observes, ignoring the way Mordecai knows damn well he must be scowling. “Relaxed, for vonce. Not...vound tight, like vatch.”

  
“Yes, I'm sure I'd make a wonderful impression, turning up to work looking this way every day, instead of my usual self. Great improvement; very _professional_.”

  
“You vorry too much vhat other people tink.”

  
Mordecai squints, scowl deepening. “No, I don't. I _never_ do.”

  
“Vhen it matters, no. Vhen it doesn't matter, yes.”

  
“That...makes absolutely _no_ sense, Viktor, even you have to see it doesn't.” As Viktor shrugs, sighing: “Well, be that as it may; if you say so. I suppose I'll have to take it under advisement. Where _is_ my watch, by the way?”

  
“In...other shoe, maybe. I don't know.”

  
“Well, you're just a fount of useful knowledge, aren't you?” What time is it? He knows there's somewhere to be, even somewhere they _both_ should be. There always is. “We should—”

  
“Sssh.”

  
“'Sssh' yourself! Don't _shush_ me, I know when I'm late, even if I don't know what for—”

  
“Vhat I say? _Sssh,_ little killer; nobody is vaiting on you, or me, either. Lie still just for naow, enjoy yourself. Be kviet.”

  
“Oh, that's not even a _word,_ not the way you—”

  
But then Viktor is kissing him, forcing that awful taste back into Mordecai's mouth along with his tongue, and _hell_ if Mordecai can't feel himself slipping straight down into whatever bath of madness last night's poison let loose—feels his bones go soft and sloppy, his eyes turn up, his toes curl. A little yowl start to form at the back of his throat. It's messy and undignified and oh, so very very, _oh_ : Like some sort of peasant curse, worked on him straight from the Old Country. Viktor and his stoic, brawny mass of muscle, his weight, his utter imperturbability; Viktor, who might one day be killed if caught from just the right angle but will _never_ be overcome, not hand to hand, not with him on top. Not if Mordecai keeps on being so intentionally stupid as to do this to himself _yet one more time_ and think it'll turn out differently, over and over and over again.

  
Such an incredible temptation: To stay here, forget everything, revel. To allow himself this moment. He's the deadliest thing in this city, after all, at least when he has his pants on. It's no shame to admit that there's _one_ sole problem he can't solve with a judicious application of lead, _one_ person who will always be able to catch him unawares, so long as that person means him no harm—will never mean him any harm. Never has before.

  
(But how can he be sure, really? How can he _ever_ be?)

  
Things change. Things get swept away.

  
( _Like me, with you._ )

  
He waits it out, with all the finely-honed patience he can possibly muster, because even a man Viktor's size eventually has to breathe. And when they break apart, at last, Mordecai shakes his bound fists in Viktor's face, as nicely as the position will allow. Ordering: “Untie me, damn it, you owe me that much, I think. I'm covered in _you,_ and my legs are going numb.”

  
“You are fine, and you know it.”

  
“I don't like mess, Viktor!”

  
Viktor grins, shaking his head dismissively. “Chah, you don't like nothing; say you don't, anyhaow.” Then adds, stroking his palms down Mordecai's sides to make him shiver, one light nail-scratch away (oh _God_ ) from the humiliation of outright _tickling_ : “But you and me? Ve know better.”

  
“I will kill you in your _sleep_.”

  
“This doesn't make me vant to let you go, in case you vonder.”

  
“Yes? Well, _this_ is a very expensive tie, you plebian! A useful accoutrement. I _need_ it. Around my _neck,_ not...elsewhere.”

  
Once more, Viktor shakes his head, grin fading. “If I untie, Mordecai, you leave. I know you.”

  
“Well, why should you care? I've _been_ rumpled, after all—thoroughly, by the feel of it. What more could you possibly want?”

  
Viktor stares at him, then, as though he's said something unbearably stupid, which Mordecai really doesn't feel he has. (Has he? No. Not by any measurable sense of the words he's used. Not by any _legitimate_ standard.) And it doesn't make sense to feel bad about that, all of a sudden, any more than it makes sense to feel bad about anything. “Feeling bad” is a purely social construction, from what little Mordecai's been able to glean; people talk about it as though it should excuse behaviour, or modify disappointment, or explain—well, anything else, at all—but it's just two words stuck together, no more or less meaningless than any other sort of agreed-upon slang. Like “ishkabibble”, or “hotsy-totsy”, or “bees' knees”, or “moral imbecility”, or “forgive and forget”. Or “love”...

  
(Love from and for his mother, yes, certainly; love from and for his sisters, certainly too. But from or for anyone else? _Here?_ Absurd.  
Patently, absurd.)

  
“Impossible,” is all Viktor says, eventually. “You don't even see. Vhat you say, vhy I...Do you?”

  
“See _what?_ ”

  
“Yes, that. Impossible little man.”

  
“You got me _drunk,_ Viktor. You know what happens when I drink.”

  
“I know, yes. Do you?”

  
And again, that wave of—something, something he doesn't like, making his face wrinkle up like a trodden-on cat's, a flush spread fluttering across all the exposed parts of him. One more thing, in a world of oh so many.

  
“...obviously not,” Mordecai says, at last. “But, I—can't go home without a necktie on anyhow, so—I suppose you get what you want either way, like usual. By being _you._ I hope you're proud of yourself.”

  
On some level, he thinks he might be trying to provoke Viktor here: Start a fight, a close-quarters brawl, some sort of hissing, biting, kicking rough-and-tumble that would reduce him to a bully and Mordecai to a justified rebel, perfectly free to use any and all methods at his disposal against pre-stacked odds. But Viktor never does do what he's supposed to, the bastard.

  
Kisses him again, instead, again gently—too gently. Cups his jaw like it's a vase, his aching head an egg, and he's afraid of crushing them both: These too-precious artifacts, crammed tight with awful secrets. Or maybe he just doesn't want to risk this never happening again, because he knows, by God, he _knows_ what Mordecai's capable of, in every sense of the phrase. He's seen it up close.

  
 _Give me an excuse,_ Mordecai thinks, face burning like a brand. Knowing, however, that much as he might not look it, Viktor is—

  
(so much)

  
—smarter than that.

  
“I go find your shoe,” Viktor says. “And spectacles. And vatch. Scissors, maybe. To cut you free.”

  
And gets up off of him, leaving him half-crushed, sore, cold.

  
(Disappointed.)

  
“That's not what I—”

  
“No? Vell, this not vhat _I_ vant. Sometimes you don't get to say how tings go, even vhen you have a gun or two. Or even vhen you not drunk, either.”

 _And what's_ that _supposed to mean, exactly?_

  
(He should probably find out, someday. But...not right now.)

  
“'Til next time, then, I suppose,” Mordecai tells Viktor's massive back as it moves away, haughtily as his position will allow him to, nose in the air like he's just won something: An argument, a victory. Another go-'round on another date, to be settled at another time. His head still hammers. His mouth is dry.

  
 _Hair of the dog,_ he thinks, knowing that's as far as _that_ particular idea will go, ever—for now, anyways. Smart or careful, pick one; you can't be both forever, or so people like to think.

  
(Can you?)

  
Viktor's coming back now, with something in his hand; Mordecai settles in, waiting to find out what it is. _Surprise me,_ he thinks, knowing that--as has already been proven, many times, beyond a shadow of a doubt--Viktor always will.

  
If nothing else, they will always have that in common.

  
THE END


End file.
